When We Are Married

J.B. Priestley's classic comedy about three couples who receive a rude shock in the midst of their joint silver wedding celebrations.

Albert Parker: Alun Armstrong

Annie Parker: Gwen Taylor

Herbert Soppitt: Alan Bennett

Clara Soppitt: Brenda Blethyn

Joe Helliwell: Michael Jayston

Maria Helliwell: Nicola Pagett

Mrs Northrop: Elizabeth Spriggs

With: Polly James, Cathryn Bradshaw,

Peter Woodthorpe, Timothy Watson,

Deborah Berlin,  Paul Panting

and James Taylor

Music: Stuart Hutchinson

Director: Matthew Walters

Saturday-Night Theatre:

Sat 18th Nov 1995

19:50 on BBC Radio 4 FM

In the heart of Northern England, three respectable couples, married on the same day, at the same church, and by the same vicar, join to celebrate 25 years of blissful matrimony. Or so they think.

Priestley's premise is simple enough: three Yorkshire couples discover, as they are about to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary, that they were never legally married. 

Social embarrassment is followed by a dawning awareness that their lives have been overturned. For the hen-pecked Herbert Soppitt it provides the chance to assert himself against his domineering spouse. But, for two of the women, it offers the prospect of liberation from stuffy and errant husbands. Having opened this particular Ibsenite can of worms, however, Priestley quickly bangs the lid back on again. In particular you wonder how Annie Parker, having acknowledged that her life partner is stingy, dreary and "idiotically conceited" can ever tamely return to the marital cage.  [The Guardian 2010]

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